This invention relates to a process for improving meats intended for cooking, more particularly those intended for prepared dishes.
Some cooked pieces of high-quality meat, i.e. lean and low in collagen, can have texture deficiencies when they are regenerated in an oven or in boiling water after having been stored, for example, in the frozen state, even if cooking has been brief and carried out at low temperature. Other pieces of meat of poorer quality, i.e. generally containing more fat and more collagen, require longer cooking at higher temperatures. In this case, water is exuded in considerable quantities during cooking. The texture is thus dry, heterogeneous and hard. The meat yield diminishes as a result of the exudation.
To obviate these disadvantages and to obtain the desired tenderness and juiciness with an improved yield, polyphosphates are generally incorporated in the raw meat, for example in the form of a marinade. This addition is unpopular among consumers because, although the polyphosphates retain water during cooking and ensure the desired tenderness, they generally conceal the fibrous texture of the meat by giving it a texture resembling that of delicatessen products. In addition, the use of polyphosphates is being increasingly opposed at the nutritional level.
It has been proposed to incorporate native whey proteins as an extending agent in raw meat, cf. for example European Patent Application EP-A 31 631. We found that this method had both technical disadvantages insofar as the incorporation of high-foaming native proteins was difficult and organoleptic disadvantages in the respect that the texture was unsatisfactory.